


Thermopolis

by Merfilly



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Female Protagonist, Gen, Western, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A world that saw the formation of an Amazonian type city in the Wild West on the advent of Hippolyta and company being exiled from their island.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thermopolis

_Prologue_

One woman and two girls, one more grown than the other, found themselves in the wind-whipped desolation of a plain at the foot of a small mountain range. Shortly after they arrived through the magical portal, a handful of other women were there, looking disheveled and angry.

"Peace, sisters," the first woman said in a firm voice. "All of you...have my deepest gratitude. Any one of you could have disavowed your allegiance to me, and remained there."

"You are our queen, and the wisdom of Athena guided your actions in aiding the men of Patriarch's world," the darkest of them said.

"Phillipus, your devotion is a shield to me," the woman with the children said kindly. "If any of you seek to denounce me..."

"NO!" the five roared as one.

"..I shall not hold it against you," she continued unperturbed. "I and my daughters, Diana and Donna, will get by in Man's World."

"Only, my queen, with us at your back," Phillipus decreed. She cast an eye to the sun, then the terrain, and to the distant mountains.

"The goddesses will hold us strong, and a new nation of our own shall arise, here, to grant sanctuary and relief to those women who need it," Io said in a quiet rumble that all listened to, recognizing prophecy.

"It seems our weapons' mistress is to be our priestess as well," the queen said. "Come; the Fates will provide, but we must assist by being diligent in looking for our new home."

"So be it," Phillipus said, swinging to the lead of the party, with Io falling to the back, keeping their queen and the royal princesses safely in the middle of them as they moved to make their new place.

`~`~`~`~`

_Several years later_

Thermopolis, Wyoming, was a city that many traders wished they could bypass. The United States Army had been asked to do something about the town of 'uppity women', but so far the city had been protected by specific grants and treaties with the distant United States government, tying the hands of the local garrisons. Raiding parties arranged by ranchers and miners and farmers alike rarely lived to speak of their attempts, and eventually the raids ceased. With the city laying protectorship over the local hot springs, with help of the Shoshone and the Arapaho, as well as them sitting on the point of the Big Horn River, just as it became a true river, meant that traders could not easily afford to ignore the city's presence.

The whole city was tied up in women doing men's business, though, and that just had never set well, even in the freedom of the Wild West.

The city did have people willing to defend it. They were known as a merciful operation, taking in orphans and widows, as well as those that life had abused and left to die alone. While the city did have some males living in it, they were fewer and far between, mostly young men of uncertain parentage learning trades before being sent off into the wilds to survive as they could. A few elderly men remained there, broken by life and cared for by the women who ministered to those who could not do for themselves.

Today found Selina visiting her sister Maggie in the small sanctuary of the city. The outward world was allowed to see the church as Christian, but truth found Athena and other ancient goddesses worshiped alongside Mary. When Selina and Maggie had arrived at the small city some years prior, it had been after Selina had killed a man who tried to take more than he had paid for, and Maggie had been in dire health from it. Maggie's recovery had been credited to the intervention of Athena's advice to the healer in charge of her case, and Maggie had found herself moved to convert upon healing. Selina was not so easily convinced, but she did not infringe on her sister's happiness by openly doubting the pantheistic order Maggie now belonged to.

"We had a new woman arrive last night, in the mail coach," Maggie told Selina. "She looks terrible, and few think she will live."

"Won't be the first time," Selina said with her trademark uncaring attitude, though rage burned bright in her chest. She'd seen the women who came here, victims of abuse, and wished she could ride out and visit vengeance on those who had attacked them.

"They are wrong," Maggie continued, just as if Selina had not commented. "There is a fight in her like yours, and she will not let the men who did this escape justice, I think."

Selina shifted to bring both her feet under her, dressed in her scandalously comfortable trousers instead of a more proper skirt. She did not have time for skirts, having found a place for herself as a hand keeping the city's communal herd of cattle corralled where they were allowed by the treaties with both local tribes. "I'm sure you'll do all you can for her, Sissie," Selina told her, leaning in to kiss her cheek. "Picnic in the courtyard?"

Maggie smiled, bright and shining. "I'd love to!"

The pair went outside, where Selina got her food and water off her horse and saw to caring for her sister. Thermopolis might be a funny place by the lights of many, but it was sanctuary for her and Maggie, and that was all that mattered.

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah kept watch at the station, her star quite visible to the men unloading and one pistol butt quite obvious. They didn't get near as much trouble as they used to out of the men in the area, but every so often one got a little fractious, and that sparked the others. She took her pursuits as the town sheriff quite seriously, despite her young years. Miss Polly Troy had a vision for this town, as a sanctuary for the downtrodden women, and Dinah had benefited too much from her largesse to let any man screw it up now.

"Sheriff Lance, you certain you don't need help with guarding these women to your jail?" one of the men called, a man she knew by the name Chase, and she also knew he was rumored to have a harder hand with justice than some deserved.

"I've got it well in hand, Chase. Just off load them, and we'll see to taking care of the rest."

One of the many provisions for the United States lending support to Ms. Troy's settlement had been the responsibility of taking on the so-called dangerous women of the prisons back East. That most of those women would not remain in the jail for long was no business of anyone but the women running the town, Dinah said. Phillipus seemed to have a knack for knowing who was a flight risk and who wasn't. So many of these women, offered a chance to live a decent life, threw their souls into the town.

One of Chase's men muttered something about steel-spined bitches, but Dinah chose not to hear it. The small posse she had rounded up saw to surrounding the women brought on this trip and started moving them on down to the jail, but Dinah remained until the train started moving on out of the station with its contingent of men. They could take their leave and pleasure in the next town on the line as far as she was concerned.

"Make sure no one decides to drop off and come back this way?" Stephanie asked, the bright blonde girl looking all too eager. Dinah's eyes flicked, and saw the Asian girl Cassandra was also there, which meant Stephanie would stay steady.

"Yes, you and Cass." Dinah turned on her heel, leaving that aspect in the younger girls' hands, and went on down to the jail to meet the new women under her responsibility.

`~`~`~`~`

"Three prostitutes, four thieves, and one murderess," Phillipus told her queen later that same evening. "The working girls are eager to learn new trades, and while one of the thieves may have a hard time controlling her fingers, the others seemed to be the kind stealing for survival."

"And the murderess?" Hippolyta, now called Polly, questioned.

"Was not of a mind to discuss the details with me or with Dinah."

Polly frowned at that, then shook her head. "Ask Diana to go and make the rounds. She has a knack for drawing the truth out in certain situations."

"I sincerely doubt Ms. Adeline Kane will resist your daughter's charms," Phillipus said, smiling at the thought.

"Few do," Polly admitted, also smiling.

`~`~`~`~`

Selina uncoiled her whip silently, watching the rider ahead. The sheriff was doing a good job of keeping the man's attention on her, which allowed Selina to maneuver into position for back-up. She wished these outlaws would get the same message the more local ranchers and such had gotten a few years back; Thermopolis was no easy picking.

"I suggest, Mister Crane, you just keep moving right along," Dinah was saying as Selina drew up in earshot of the conversation going on. "This city is a special government outpost, taking care of the sick and rehabilitating the criminal with government authority. We want no trouble and are not interested in the so-called scientific experiments you claim to have government backing for. Our people in Washington would have wired ahead of you to expect you if you were legitimate."

"Miss Lance..."

"Sheriff, Mister Crane, and don't be forgetting it," Dinah called sharply, shifting on her horse in a way that told Selina her friend had seen her and was glad for the back-up. "Ride on through, and you should make the next town about dark."

"You're making a big mistake," Crane hissed, his mild manners cracking around the edge, which was enough for Selina. She let the whip cut the air, popping the tip near but not on the horse Crane was riding, startling the creature into rearing, which made Crane cling for all he was worth so he would not be thrown.

"Get moving!" Dinah added on the tip of that, never once having pulled her pistol, but with all the authority of her position. The lone rider cursed her, but his horse started running on the next pop of the whip, leaving him little choice but to try and chart a course for the next town.

Selina thought they'd be lucky if he ran afoul of either the natives between here and there, or of that town's low-lifes once he had arrived.

"Bit of a nebbish for a loner," Selina purred, once Dinah had trotted her mount over to where the ranch hand was standing.

"So he was, but that just makes him more dangerous, since he's still breathing," Dinah said, reaching down a hand to pull Selina up. The second woman accepted the pull, and the ride, settling in behind the sheriff of their little town quite easily. "Thankful for the hand, Selina, but why were you out this way without your horse?"

"Oh, doing a little exploring." Selina smiled over Dinah's shoulder. "Actually, I took a walk after seeing Maggie today, and found myself out here before I knew it. Took a catnap in the rocks, and then I heard your voice and his."

"Been a busy week, so I hadn't seen you much," Dinah answered that. "Maggie doing fine? I heard she had a new patient, girl named Holly?"

Selina frowned, then nodded. "Yes. She's wanting me to get involved in the girl's therapy."

"You're good with the younger girls," Dinah commented. "Me, I'm having to settle in the new ladies. We've cleared them all for work, based on their entrance interviews, but one of them can't seem to help herself from picking up things that aren't hers."

"Sometimes a girl just has to have pretties," Selina purred, remembering those days of acquisition with both fondness and a bitter sense of how wrong it all had gone.

Dinah chuckled. "Phillipus is sending her on to Io, to learn how to make things," she said. "The only one I just don't really understand is the one here for murder. She won't talk to anyone, not even Diana, about her actions, and only says that she did as her honor demanded." Dinah sighed a little. "Why do some women have to be so prim and close-mouthed? We've allowed her out on her word that she is not seeking to run away, because Diana believes it, but it would go a long way to reassuring folks if we knew why she killed her husband."

"Surely she had good reasons; it was only a man after all," Selina said, knowing how riled up those words would get her friend.

"Selina, you are completely incorrigible! You know good and well that some men are just as good as us, and that there are women every bit as determined to be nasty as any of the men that drove some of us here!" Dinah protested, only catching herself when she turned her head enough to catch the smirk on Selina's lips. "Oh, you..." She had to smile though, as only Selina could make her do. "You love working me up like that."

"I really do," Selina agreed, settling her arms around Dinah's waist for the rest of the ride back to town.

`~`~`~`~`

Donna walked alongside Diana as they did their duty in the sanatorium, ministering to the sick and wretched found there. She was looking forward to the end of this round, because Stephanie and Cass and some of the other girls were going to go with her to the hot spring on the northeast side of the town for a camp out all their own. Her mother wasn't quite aware that was what was going on, but Io did, and Io would make sure that the young ladies were left alone.

"Donna, do you think mother is being wise in accepting Adeline in our household?" Diana asked as they walked toward the last ward.

"You said that you did not perceive any threat from her toward us, so why are you asking me that?" Donna asked her in turn.

"I don't know; I just feel like there are secrets surrounding her like a cloak."

Donna smiled and took her big sister's hand. "We all have secrets. Possibly she's been hurt badly enough to need to keep them as her only possession that can't hurt her in turn. Or maybe she just would rather not share any shame hidden in them," Donna counseled.

Diana frowned, then nodded slowly. "You're right. We all do, and she might." Diana then pulled Donna into a sideways hug. "Don't you be reckless tonight."

"Diana!" Donna protested, but of course her sister knew the truth of where they would be.

"Dinah and I and our friends did it too," Diana admitted. "I think mother knows, but doesn't let on so that we can each have our secret pact with our friends."

Donna flushed, but that made sense. In a town with a purpose like this one, the chance to be foolishly young only came in limited doses. Io would know, and that should be enough.

`~`~`~`~`

Polly was just leaning toward Phillipus at the dining table when Io came in, short of breath and bleeding from her shoulder. "Donna...the girls..."

Phillipus was on her feet in moments, heading for her arms stacked neatly near the door, while Polly came up onto her feet to go acquire her own. "You get to Epione," Phillipus told the weapons-mistress and occasional prophetess.

"But the girls..."

"I'll get Dinah, and plenty of other help. Which direction?"

"Northwest, toward the mountains," Io managed, before staggering toward their healing sister.

`~`~`~`~`

Donna kept her head. The minute the shooting started, she knew they were in danger. While she had not expected Io to be quite that vigilant in placing guards on the hot springs, right now she was very relieved to have the warning. She and Cass hustled every one of the girls into their clothing again, and the ones who carried pistols made them ready, while the ones solely with knives made sure they could get to them.

All their preparation was for nothing, though, as someone from outside the rocks surrounding the springs through something into the sulphuric waters, causing a smoke to build and start choking them all with noxious fumes, tears running down their faces from the smell.

Even bereft of her weapon, and hands tied behind her back in a wagon with the other six girls, Donna continued to think, and plan. These men would not find the daughters of Thermopolis an easy prize, and if they slowed them down enough, Donna was positive her mother and the rest of the city would catch up to them quite quickly.

`~`~`~`~`

Crane cursed the men he had hired for cowardice, even as the guns rattled around him. He'd had plenty of warning that the girls would be alone at the springs from the woman he had paid. He had not known about the guards, but he had been certain they'd killed all three.

Apparently at least one had made it to tell the tale.

"Get the brats out of the wagon and use them as cover!" he roared over the gunfire, and the cowards he had hired hastened to do just that.

`~`~`~`~`

Selina hunkered down near Polly Troy, Phillipus, and Dinah, not much paying mind to the quiet newcomer on the other side of them. "We'll have to get in close," Selina said, patting her whip.

"Not sure how many there are," Dinah said, musing a bit before she took a shot when one of the men broke from cover toward the wagon. She thought she'd winged him, but he kept moving.

"We'll keep them pinned down, but who will go in?" Phillipus asked. "And no, my lady, not you," she immediately told Polly.

"I'll go," the newcomer said, eyes glinting with an anger at any man who dared make victims of young women like this.

Selina sized her up, then stuck her hand out. "Selina Kyle."

"Adeline Kane." They shook briefly, and then looked at the other women.

"You be damn careful, Selina," Dinah said in a low hiss of a voice.

"I know you have me covered, little bird; what could happen to me under your care?" Selina asked, her voice flirtatious enough to make Dinah's cheeks go pink. Polly and Phillipus both pretended not to see it, and then Phillipus spread word down the ranks of those who had come with them on how to keep the men pinned down.

All of them prayed the two women moving in close were quick enough, before those men started killing their hostages.

`~`~`~`~`

Adeline Kane had learned that despite the blue blood in her veins, she knew and understood exactly what it took to rid the world of diseased dogs in the world. Men who would prey on girls not much older than she had been when she went away to finishing school fell easily into that category. While she did not know the woman who partnered her going into camp, there was something in the gracefully feline motions Selina used to move from shadow to shadow that bespoke a common ability in terms of bloodshed.

The women across the terrain from the men and their hostages were doing a very good job of not letting on that there were two fewer gunners. Adeline appreciated the effort, as she maneuvered to where she would have the cleanest shots on as many of the thugs as possible.

The sound of a whip was apparently the signal for chaos, as the tall, skinny man holding Donna entirely too close for his own shield had to drop her and reach up for his throat, face turning a florid red as his air was viciously cut off by the cord around it. Adeline fired three times in succession before she lost her clear lines of sight on the remaining four men.

"Boys, I don't think you got paid enough to spill your guts here, did you? The tribes will be coming pretty quick, you see, to find out why the sanctity of their holy springs have been violated, and I really wouldn't want to have to explain just what was going on, now would you?" Selina purred, never once easing up from her hold on the whip, brazen and defiant for the fact they each could kill her before she could draw her pistol. But for them to do so, they'd set themselves up to be shot from behind, or by Adeline. Adeline realized that the whip-wielding ranch hand was more than willing to trust her, and had to wonder at the sanity in this strange town she had come to live in.

The remaining thugs looked at the odds, and then threw down their weapons as the tall thin one caught in Selina's whip buckled to the ground, unconscious or worse from lack of oxygen.

Adeline kept them covered with both pistols, while Donna did the honors of kicking guns away.

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah sat on the blanket outside the sanctuary, Maggie on another side, Selina on the third, and young Holly on the fourth. The girl, who had been badly used down near Carson City, was just starting to get comfortable with socializing, and had fixated on the story of Selina saving Maggie as a reason for hero-worshipping the ranch-hand.

Selina didn't know what to do with that, but Holly was a sweet kid, and needed a teacher.

"So Ms. Troy is going to talk to both tribes about manning watch posts all the time, to better protect the springs...and our people," Dinah finished telling Maggie, having just returned from delivering Crane and his remaining henchmen to the marshal of the territory.

"It makes sense." Maggie nodded. "The young woman who was in league with them?"

Dinah shook her head. "Hate to say it, but some women are just as unconvinced of better ways as men can be. She's in solitary for now. Diana is going to try and get through to her, but I have a feeling Miss Pris is just a bad penny all the way through."

"And life goes on," Selina murmured, before stretching back on the blanket, her stomach full, and the sunbeam warm.

"So it does," Dinah agreed.


End file.
